The Night She Disappeared

  In my mind’s eye, Kayla’s running into the dark, her hands in front of her, her breath coming in panicked gasps.

  But why did she get out of the car? She could have locked the doors or leaned on the horn; she could have used her cell phone or driven away. She could have run him over. I imagine her punching the gas, the satisfying thunk as he disappeared under her bumper.

  But instead Kayla got out of the car. And then she must have run. For whatever reason, she didn’t get back in. Maybe he was between her and the car. Or did she try, did Kayla try to stay in the car, and he dragged her out while she kicked and screamed? But then I remember how they found her purse, still sitting on the passenger seat, undisturbed. So whatever happened happened outside the car.

  Kayla set the parking brake. She got out of the car. Was she by herself then? But if she was by herself, why would she get the pizzas? There’s no house nearby. She would only do that if she thought she was with whoever had ordered them.

  Or did the guy grab them after he had done whatever he did to her, come back to her car, his job finished, and take them? Only then he panicked, maybe at the sound of a car, and dropped them and ran away.

  My thoughts go back to Kayla, running from the car. It’s all I can think about.

  And that’s when I start to run. In a second, I hear Drew’s footsteps behind me. He’s calling, “Gabie, stop this! Gabie!”

  I cut down the slope, heading for the sound of the river. It’s hidden by a line of bushes and trees.

  Did she scream, her voice echoing through the empty night? Or did she save her breath so she could run faster? Did Kayla try to keep her footsteps light, so he couldn’t follow her in the dark? With the river so close, the sound of the water might have given her some cover. I imagine her running, her hands outstretched in front of her, thinking, thinking—which way could she go? Where could she be safe? Was there any place she could hide?

  And all the time she’s running as fast as she can. Running from the man hunting her.

  I close my eyes, imagining the blackness that night, but my lids flutter open a second later.

  He must have caught her. Why else was there a bloody rock down by the river?

  Drew’s fingertips graze my shoulder, and just like that, my adrenaline pumps even harder. My breath is coming in gasps. Drew’s staying right on my heels.

  How did the guy catch Kayla? Did he grab her shoulder? Or was she wearing her hair in a ponytail that night? Did he snatch it, jerking her head back? I see her crying out, falling to her knees, sharp rocks cutting her hands. Maybe that’s where the blood came from.

  And here it is, the river, dark gray and about fifty feet across. A ten-foot slope covered with weeds and stunted bushes leads down to it, and then there’s the bank itself, edged with lots of broken black rocks. Nobody would walk along here if they could help it. The dirt closest to the river looks stained and oily. About a hundred feet farther down, one area’s all churned up. No yellow crime scene tape, but I don’t need any to know this is where they found the bloody rock. I realize I’ve stopped running, stopped moving altogether.

  Drew catches up with me, swearing under his breath. Together, we walk over to the spot that stands out because of what isn’t there. It’s like Kayla herself. Her absence sets off echoes. At work, I keep expecting to hear her voice or see her laughing at the counter.

  I look down at the broken ground. Was this the last place where Kayla drew a breath, made a sound?

  But I still can’t believe it. I just can’t.

  What if there were two of them? That’s an even worse thought. Two men, not one. What kind of a chance would Kayla have had then? None at all. One could hold her while the other one did whatever he wanted to her—slapped her, tore off her clothes. Or hit her with a rock.

  And why the rock? Did she cut her hand falling? Or was it something worse? Had the bad things happened yet, or was it just the beginning? Or—and my heart quickens here—maybe Kayla was the one who hefted the rock. Maybe she hit him in the head and then fled the quickest way she could, by jumping into the river. But how could she survive a nighttime swim in swift-moving water?

  And that’s when I kick off my shoes. I barely register Drew yelling, “What the hell are you doing?” I hold my breath and leap.

  The water is an icy shock. You hear about spring snowmelt, but all that’s an abstraction until you’re in it. For a second, I can’t breathe, I can’t think, I can’t figure out what to do with my arms and legs.

  And then it comes back to me. I take a deep breath and start treading water. Still, every eggbeater kick is an effort. My arms are leaden, my legs numb.

  I’m a good swimmer. When I was fourteen, I was a junior lifeguard, but Drew doesn’t know that. All he knows is I’m in the water. He stares at me from shore, his face open and frightened.

  I’m about to call to him, to tell him I’m okay, when suddenly he kicks off his own shoes and throws himself into the water. I realize he’s trying to save me.

  But it’s pretty clear Drew is not much of a swimmer. And the current is carrying both of us downstream.

  His head sinks lower, low enough that water goes over his lips. And Drew reacts like someone who’s just stuck his finger in a light socket. He’s rigid and fighting, all at once.

  Then his head goes completely under and he comes up gasping, hyperventilating, just plain freaking out. Little spots of sunshine are dancing on the water, and I realize Drew might die right here, right now. And it will be my fault.

  All I really want to do is curl up in a ball. I’m still so cold. Instead, I swim toward Drew. He keeps sputtering, lifting his head out of the water, looking for me. From my lifeguard training, I remember to approach him from behind, so he can’t climb on top of me in a panic and take me underwater. Only since he can’t see me, he is panicking even more.

  Once I get close to him, I yell, “Don’t grab on to me!”

  He manages to spin around, his expression a weird mixture of fear and relief.

  Then he goes underwater for the second time.

  I snag the back of his shirt and start pulling him in.

  By the time I reach the bank, my body is done. We lie next to each other, half in and half out of the water, panting. I want to pull myself completely onto the bank, but I can’t summon the energy.

  Drew levers himself up on his elbow. “What the hell were you trying to do?” he croaks out, but with each word his voice strengthens. “You almost killed me. Do you realize that? You almost killed me!”

  He shakes my shoulder, and then his hand slips and he’s on top of me. I’m crying and trying to hit him.

  He grabs my wrists and pins me down. I arch my back and try to buck him off. The old-penny taste of blood floods my mouth.

  His face contorts with fear and anger. “Are you crazy?”

  I start to sob, huge sobs that must have been stored up in my chest for the past three days.

  “Maybe I am. It was supposed to be me,” I choke out. “It was supposed to be me.”

  With a groan, Drew throws himself down on the rocks beside me. He looks different with his hair plastered to his skull. More vulnerable.

  “Maybe it was,” he says quietly, “but that’s not how it worked out. It’s not up to you to kill yourself to prove they made a mistake. Kayla wouldn’t want that.”

  My sobs slow down, get spaced further apart, and finally stop.

  “You know what the strangest thing is?” I whisper. “I feel like she’s alive. I’m not talking about her spirit. I’m talking about the real Kayla. It feels like she’s alive.”

  The Fourth Day

  Drew

  GABIE IS CLEARLY a mess. Trying to kill herself, trying to kill me.

  I don’t know what to do or say. And then I start to laugh.

  She levers herself up on one elbow. “Why are you laughing?” Her eyes are narrowed. But one corner of her mouth crooks up like she wants to be let in on the joke. Her hair is tangled.

  “Be
cause I’ve worked with you for what—more than a year?—and I would never have guessed in a million years you would act like that. Aren’t you supposed to be the responsible one?”

  Her head snaps back like I slapped her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Hey, don’t act all insulted. Everyone knows that your parents are these big-shot doctors. And that you’re always on the honor roll. I’ve seen you work, remember? You follow all of Pete’s rules. You weigh everything. You always use the pusher on the Hobart. You won’t let me turn the closed sign over even two minutes early. You’re the good girl.”

  “That’s just it.” Gabie heaves a shaky sigh. “I feel responsible. If Kayla hadn’t asked to trade with me, it would have been me in that car. Not her.” She turns to look at the water, lapping only inches from us. Her voice is so soft I have to strain to hear. “Me being thrown in the river.”

  “She’s the one who asked to trade, not you,” I point out. Still, I know all about guilt. I know all about feeling like you should have been able to stop something.

  But why did Gabie have to dive in the river? Even though we’re on the riverbank, the sun already drying out our clothes, part of me still feels like I’m thrashing in the water. Feeling it close over my head, my feet searching for the bottom and not finding it. Water burning my nose and throat. My lungs all hollow with need.

  In that same faded voice, Gabie says, “In some ways, it makes more sense that someone took Kayla.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Because she’s pretty. Prettier than me.”

  I sit all the way up. “That’s just whack. Are you saying girls who are pretty deserve to be kidnapped? They deserve whatever happens to them?”

  “No,” she says.

  But I’m not sure she means it.

  Transcript of 911 Call

  911 Operator: Police, fire, or medical?

  Unknown male caller: Police.

  911 Operator: What is the nature of your emergency?

  Unknown male caller: It’s about that missing girl. Kayla Cutler. Ask Cody Renfrew about it. Ask him. Ask him why he painted his truck. Because it was white, and that’s the color they said on the news. The color of the truck that took that girl. Cody’s truck used to be white. Now all of a sudden, it’s brown. Ask him where he was Wednesday night. Ask him.

  The Fourth Day

  Gabie

  I’M SITTING in front of my computer. It’s nearly midnight, but my parents are at the hospital. There was some five-car pileup on I-5, Jaws of Life, Life Flight, etc., the kind of thing that means their weekend just became a work-day. I’m eating one of three snack-sized bags of Ruffles Sour Cream and Cheddar chips I bought at Subway after work. I’m too scared to buy a big bag at Safeway when it’s dark, even if I park right up front.

  I’ve decided this day has been weird enough that I deserve to eat junk food. Even though normally the house keeper who comes in twice a week empties the garbage, I’ll take the empty bags to school Monday so my mom doesn’t see them and lecture me about cholesterol, sodium, and trans fats.

  My head is all jumbled up with what happened today. Seeing Sergeant Thayer again. Pete telling us about the bloody rock. Offering Drew my car without even thinking about it. Driving to the river and everything that happened there. Drew and I went back to work, and I tried to pretend I hadn’t told him the things I had been thinking. Tried to act around him the way I act around everyone. Like we hadn’t gone down to the river, hadn’t seen that white cross, hadn’t nearly drowned. Hadn’t rolled over each other on the riverbank.

  Right now, I’m not even tasting the chips, just cramming them in my mouth while I look online. It’s scary how many sites there are for missing people. Most of them are crowded with too many words, too many fonts, too many pixilated clip-art pictures of roses and angels and candles. Some of them are sad remnants left up even though the person they were created to find isn’t missing anymore. At the top of one Web page is a newspaper story headlined “Prep School Student Admits Killing Girl with Bat.”

  I click and click, until I end up at missingkids.com. It’s like a clearing house for kids all over the United States who have disappeared. You can search by name, by sex, by year, by state.

  I just type in Oregon and hit return. There are nearly fifty kids who have gone missing in Oregon over the last twenty years. I click on the listings one by one. The recent listings have only a single photo that shows a chubby toddler or a sullen-looking teen. The ones who disappeared a long time ago have two photos, a dated-looking picture from when they first went missing and a second updated by a computer program, so you can see what they should have looked like when they turned thirty or forty or even older.

  Sucking orange cheese dust from my fingers, I’m looking at an entry for a guy who was twelve when he disappeared in 1987. He has a photo labeled “Age Progression.” I have a feeling this stocky man in a blue polo shirt with a shaving nick on his Adam’s apple never existed outside of Photoshop. That he was only bones well before he had a chance to be an adult.

  I click and click, until the details blur together. They went to the mall, to the fair, to church—only they never came home. Sometimes they never went anyplace but to bed. They were last seen with friends, with three boys, on the beach with an older man, getting into a car, going fishing, getting off the bus. They have gaps between their teeth, freckles, a mole on their nose, need medication. They grin at me from school portraits or family photos.

  Underneath their photos are sad scraps of facts. “Tyler’s photo is shown age-progressed to 24 years. He was last seen in his bed. He has warts on his right foot.” Tyler has been missing for twenty-one years. Those warts must be long gone, one way or another.

  I don’t realize that I’m crying until a hot tear plops on my thigh.

  City of Roses Lab Report

  DNA from a toothbrush belonging to Kayla Cutler (Exhibit A) as well as from blood on a rock found by the Willamette River (Exhibit B) was amplified using the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) and profiled at the loci listed on the attached table.

  A single human DNA profile was identified in Exhibit B which matches the DNA profile of Kayla Cutler obtained from Exhibit A. This profile would be expected to occur in approximately 1 in 273 billion unrelated individuals.

  The evidence will be held in the laboratory vault and may be picked up at your earliest convenience.

  From the Web Site of Trevor G. Smith, Criminal Defense Attorney

  Q: Why should I never talk to the police or law enforcement agencies about a crime?

  A: Regardless of whether you think you are guilty or innocent of a crime, you should never talk to the police before you first talk with an attorney. The police often lead people to believe they will receive a lesser penalty if they confess. Usually, the opposite is true. After you have an attorney and negotiate an agreement, then you may benefit from giving information to the police.

  Q: Can the police lie to me?

  A: Yes! Many people are surprised that the police are allowed to lie. Think about it; they lie every day when they pretend to be drug buyers and instead are undercover narcotics detectives. Or they pretend to be johns and tell prostitutes that they are customers. The sad truth is the American justice system allows police officers to lie. And they will lie if they think it will build a case against you.

  The United States Supreme Court has ruled that the police can lie to you in order to extract a confession. Police officers are also allowed to lie about evidence. For example, in a 1978 case, the police said they had compared the defendant’s fingerprints to a fingerprint on the victim’s checkbook and that they matched. Actually, no fingerprints were found on the checkbook. The defendant then confessed to the robbery. The Court later ruled that the police deception did not invalidate a voluntary confession.

  Transcript of Police Interview With Cody Renfrew

  Today’s date is May 11, and it is approximately 10:30 A.M. Myself—Sergeant R. F. Thayer with the Port
land Police Department—and FBI Special Agent Berkeley Moore as well as Cody Renfrew are present. At this time, I am going to advise you of your rights. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak with an attorney and have him or her present with you while you are being questioned. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed to represent you before any questioning if you wish. You can decide at any time to exercise these rights and not answer any questions or make any statements. Do you understand these rights, which I have explained to you?

  R: Yeah.

  T: Could you speak up for me?

  R: Yeah.

  T: Okay, having these rights in mind, are you willing to speak with us and allow us to talk with you?

  R: I’ll listen, yeah, I’ll listen to you.

  T: Are you willing to sign this?

  R: So what is this—I sign over my rights?

  T: All it is is you are basically saying we told you these rights and you understand them and you’re willing to talk to us. You’re not signing any rights away. If you don’t want to talk with us, don’t talk with us. If you want to stop, you can stop.

  R: Okay, yeah, I’ll sign it.

  T: Sign right down on that line.

  R: Okay.

  T: We’re here to talk to you today about this girl, Kayla Cutler, who you know.

  R: I don’t know her. You can’t pin this on me.